The mission of the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment is to enhance institutional effectiveness by providing information that supports and strengthens decision-making and planning processes at Washington College. The central objectives of the Office are to provide systematic, objective, timely, and accurate research in support of the College’s goals, planning, and decision-making.

The Office of Student Engagement contributes to the holistic education of Washington College students by providing co-curricular opportunities focused on enhancing personal, educational, leadership, and social development.

The Center for Environment & Society at Washington College supports interdisciplinary research and education, exemplary stewardship of natural and cultural resources, and the integration of ecological and social values.

Administers the college’s study abroad programs, provides programming and services to international students that are specific to their international status, advises faculty on overseas activities, and develops initiatives to further internationalize the campus.

We help you get here! Located in the Casey Academic Center, we’re here to help you navigate the college admissions process. Visit with your admissions counselor, take a tour of campus, attend an info session and more. We’re here Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. and on select Saturdays.

Student Affairs ensures a lively, challenging, and supportive out-of-class experience for Washington College students that complements their academic work. The main office is located on the second floor of the Casey Academic Center and is open M-F 8:30-4:30.

The Washington College Bookstore is the one stop shop for all of text book and WAC gear needs. We can answer all of your textbook questions, while making sure you and your family are dressed in your WAC best.

The Office of English Language Learning supports English-language learning students throughout their academic careers. It also facilitates their adaption to the American educational system and strives to alleviate cross-cultural misunderstandings that occur between students and faculty.

Faculty who are interested in obtaining grant funds for a program or project should first read and then follow the Grant Approval Process.

What, exactly, does it take to find, win, and manage grant funds?

Research

Contact and Cultivation

Letters of Inquiry and Proposals

Post-Grant Work

Featured Grant Opportunities

NSF Facilitating Research at Primarily UndergraduateInstitutions (RUI)—Supports research by faculty members that engages them in their professional field(s), builds capacity for research at their home institution, and supports the integration of research and undergraduate education. RUI proposals are evaluated and funded by NSF programs in the disciplinary areas* of the proposed research and are funded at their discretion. Prospective PIs should contact disciplinary program officers to identify specific NSF programs and to determine the feasibility and timing of requests.

NSF Earth Sciences: Instrumentation and Facilities—Supports meritorious proposals for infrastructure that promotes research and education in the areas currently supported by the Division of Earth Sciences. The four major funding areas are:

NSF Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER)—The EAGER funding mechanism may be used to support exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches.

The Whitehall Foundation—The Whitehall Foundation is focused exclusively on assisting basic research in vertebrate (excluding clinical) and invertebrate neurobiology in the United States. Investigations should specifically concern neural mechanisms involved in sensory, motor, and other complex functions of the whole organism as these relate to behavior. The overall goal should be to better understand behavioral output or brain mechanisms of behavior. ﻿

Research grants are available to established scientists of all ages working at accredited institutions in the United States. Applications will be judged on the scientific merit and the innovative aspects of the proposal as well as on the competence of the applicant. Research grants of up to three years will be provided. A renewal grant with a maximum of two years is possible, but it will be awarded on a competitive basis. Research grants will not be awarded to investigators who have already received, or expect to receive, substantial support from other sources, even if it is for an unrelated purpose. Research grants normally range from $30,000 to $75,000 per year.

The Grants-in-Aid program is designed for researchers at the assistant professor level who experience difficulty in competing for research funds because they have not yet become firmly established. Grants-in-Aid can also be made to senior scientists. All applications will be judged on the scientific merit and innovative aspects of the proposal, as well as on past performance and evidence of the applicant’s continued productivity. Grants-in-Aid are awarded for a one-year period and do not exceed $30,000.

DEADLINES:

LETTERS OF INQUIRY - 1/15, 4/15, 10/1

PROPOSALS - 6/1, 9/1, 2/15

Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) Cottrell Scholars—The Cottrell Scholar Award (CSA) is available to early career faculty at U. S. research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions. Eligible applicants are tenure-track faculty members whose primary appointment is in a department of astronomy, chemistry, or physics that offers, the minimum, a bachelor’s degree. For the 2016 proposal cycle, eligibility is limited to faculty members who started their first tenure-track appointment any time in calendar year 2013.

DEADLINES: MAY 15 (pre-proposal)

AUGUST 15 (full proposal)

NEH Common HeritageGrants—These grants support day-long events organized by community cultural institutions, which members of the public will be invited to attend. At these events experienced staff will digitize the community historical materials brought in by the public. Project staff also will record descriptive information—provided by community attendees—about the historical materials. Contributors will be given a free digital copy of their items to take home, along with the original materials. With the owner’s permission, digital copies of these materials would be included in the institutions’ collections. Historical photographs, artifacts, documents, family letters, art works, and audiovisual recordings are among the many items eligible for digitization and public commemoration. Projects must also present public programming that would expand knowledge of the community’s history. Public programs could include lectures, panels, reading and discussion, special gallery tours, screening and discussion of relevant films, presentations by a historian, special initiatives for families and children, or comments by curators about items brought in by the public.

NEXT DEADLINE: JUNE 2016

TOMODACHI Initiative—Awards grants, typically ranging from $5,000 to $80,000, to USA and Japan nonprofit organizations to invest in the next generation of Japanese and American leaders through educational and cultural exchanges as well as entrepreneurship and leadership programs.

Particular interest is given to programs with a STEM focus, as well as programs that help prepare young women for careers in STEM or business fields.

The TOMODACHI Initiative seeks to foster a “TOMODACHI generation” of young American and Japanese leaders who are committed to and engaged in strengthening U.S.-Japan relations, appreciate each other’s countries and cultures, and possess the global skills and mindsets needed to contribute to and thrive in a more cooperative, prosperous, and secure world.

DEADLINES: JULY 15, 2016

OCTOBER 15, 2016

NSF Faculty Early Career Development [CAREER] Program—The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. NSF encourages submission of CAREER proposals from junior faculty members at all CAREER-eligible organizations and especially encourages women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities to apply.

JULY 22, 2015

JULY 23, 2015

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works Grants—supports projects that:

are likely to prove transformative with the potential for meaningful change, whether in the development or enhancement of new or existing art forms, new approaches to the creation or presentation of art, or new ways of engaging the public with art;

are distinctive, offering fresh insights and new value for their fields and/or the public through unconventional solutions; and

have the potential to be shared and/or emulated, or are likely to lead to other advances in the field.

The NEA wants to achieve the following four objectives through the Art Works category:

Creation: The creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence,

2015 DEADLINE: JULY 23, 2015

2015 DEADLINE: JULY 28, 2015

Fulbright U. S. Scholar Program—The core Fulbright U. S. Scholar Program provides approximately 800 teaching and/or research grants to U. S. faculty and experienced professionals in a wide variety of academic and professional fields. Fulbright grants, which are available in over 126 countries worldwide, generally cover travel and living costs in-country for the grantee and his/her accompanying dependents.

2015 DEADLINE: AUGUST 3, 2015

NEH Museums, Libraries, and Cultural Organizations; Planning and Implementation Grants—These National Endowment for the Humanities grants provide support for museums, libraries, historic places, and other organizations that produce public programs in the humanities. Planning grants support the early stages of project development, including consultation with scholars, refinement of humanities themes, preliminary design, and audience evaluation. Implementation grants support final scholarly research and consultation, design development, production, and installation of a project for presentation to the public.

2015 DEADLINE: AUGUST 15

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Sloan Research Fellowships—The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. These two-year fellowships are awarded yearly to 126 researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. Candidates must hold a tenure track (or equivalent position) at a college, university, or other degree-granting institution in the U. S. or Canada. Tenure track faculty positions at the candidate’s institution must include a yearly teaching requirement. Candidates must hold a Ph.D. (or equivalent) in chemistry, computational or evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, ocean sciences, physics, or a related field. Candidates’ most recent Ph.D. (or equivalent) must have been awarded on or after September 1, 2009.

2015 DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 15 (nominations)

2016 Pittsburgh Conference Memorial National College Grants Program—Awards grants to small college science departments for the purchase of scientific equipment, audio-visual or other teaching aids, and/or library materials for use in the teaching of science at the undergraduate level.

DEADLINE: OCTOBER 2

NEH, Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC)—SCHC grants help cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures that mitigate deterioration and prolong the useful life of collections. The program helps cultural repositories—libraries, archives, museums, historical organizations—plan and implement preservation strategies that pragmatically balance effectiveness, cost, and environmental impact. Sustainable approaches to preservation can contribute to an institution’s financial health, reduce its use of fossil fuels, and benefit its green initiatives, while ensuring that collections are well cared for and available for use in humanities programming, education, and research. All applicants, whether applying for planning or implementation projects, are required to focus on sustainable preventive conservation strategies.

2015 DEADLINE: DECEMBER 1

Chesapeake Bay Trust/NOAA K-12 EnvironmentalEducationMini-Grants—Funds are provided to educate K-12 students about their local watersheds and how they can become environmental stewards and make a difference in watershed health. To accomplish this goal the program supports meaningful outdoor learning experiences around a watershed issue investigation including field trips, fieldwork, student-led action projects, and schoolyard habitat projects as well as programs for building teacher capacity to implement environmental education, which includes professional development trainings and programs to advance environmental literacy in the Chesapeake Bay region.